CHAPTER VII
The Egyptian Museum
Rick hung up the room phone and joined Scotty at the breakfast table. The ex-Marine was munching on a Lebanese tangerine and watching the Nile boats below.
"Farid says to take the morning off," Rick reported. "The scientists are about convinced that the signal isn't internal receiver noise, but that leaves them up a tree. If part of the circuit isn't causing the trouble, what is?"
Scotty waved his hand at the scene across the Nile where a great concrete tower rose into the sky. "It's this land. Look at it. There's a tower for television. A couple of miles away are the pyramids. Down the street is a new office building with aluminum walls, and it's right next to a stone mosque that's nearly as old as the city. If you ask me, Horus or Thoth or one of the old Egyptian gods is getting fed up and messing with the signal just for the fun of it."
Rick knew exactly how Scotty felt. The remarkable blend of the very old and the ultramodern was visible everywhere in Cairo. But somehow the two did not conflict, probably because the Egyptians had been wise in their choice of architecture.
"Maybe we'd better burn some incense and do a chant or two," Rick suggested. "How's this? Oh, Osiris, son of Isis, please get the bugs out of our antenna."
"That's no fit chant," Scotty objected. "A chant should rhyme, shouldn't it?"
Rick searched his memory for incantations to Egyptian gods, but there had been none in the books Bartouki had given them, although the gods had been described. He improvised quickly. "Then how's this?"